Derek Wall, Principal Male Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales, has an excellent overview of ecosocialism and its increasing relevance and importance to the Left in Britain and Europe.
Many European Green Parties, in my view have moved to the centre ground and need an injection of ecosocialism if they are to be relevant, more positively the Latin American left as shown by the reaction of Cuba to oil shortages, to Chavez’s condemnation of the great car economy to Morales speech to the UN, to the participation of Hugo Blanco in the ecosocialist network to the work of the green socialist in Brazil…shows that ecosocialism is making modest waves.
It’s relevant here in the States too of course. But the ignorance of and hostility to socialism here means you generally have to wade through all the knee-jerk So You Love Stalin garbage before people start to understand that socialism is multi-faceted and genuinely relevant.
What’s generally absent from US political discourse is any discussion of class, and that’s precisely what socialism brings, 150 years of analysis and understanding of how class is inherent in our political and economic systems – something the ruling class has always understood quite perfectly. Activism and determination is also something socialism brings, as the desire for social change is in its DNA. In most any movement for social justice, you’ll generally find socialists organizing, often long after others have given up too. Like I said, it’s in the DNA. Plus, the experience of 150 years of organizing has been written down and documented and thus offers a huge body of experience on which to draw.
The joining of the environmental movement with socialism into ecosocialism, with its criticism of capitalism as a primary driver of environmental degradation and exploitation, shows the relevance of socialism as we deal with global warming and peak oil.